The Bird Caller, a graphic novel by J. F. Martel and Dominic Bercier, is a story told with minimal words about the last physical man on earth. The world has been decimated by a nuclear war, and the consciousnesses of all mankind have been uploaded into a hard drive called the Ark, which Dennett, the last man, is responsible to keep safe until at last he is able to leave his body behind and join them in a “digital Eden.”
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Tag Archives: Editorial
Saturday Reviews: The Bird Caller
Filed under Comic Reviews, Saturday Reviews
Editorial | Starz’ Outlander, My Reaction
This weekend, the Starz channel aired the season one premier of the TV adaptation of the beloved novel Outlander. In the Venn diagram of book genres, Outlander nestles neatly in the overlap between romance novel, historical fiction, and fantasy. The majority of the book is set in Scotland in 1743, but there is definitely magic involved in the tale. I’ve been meaning to read Outlander for quite a while, and was shocked to actually find it in my reading pile of doom recently, meaning that I picked it up without realizing it at some point in my travels. Starz was just about to begin a TV series based on the book, so what better time to read it?
Having freshly read the book for the first time right before watching the first episode of the show has allowed me to make more accurate comparisons between the two. Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly about Starz’s TV adaptation.
Filed under Editorial, Movie Reviews, Tracy Gronewold
Editorial | Victims of Cosplay
It’s been one full week since San Diego Comic-con, the mother of all comic book conventions, and in the middle of all the wonderful stories of sneak peeks, exclusive merchandise, and chance encounters with geeky celebrities was a very sad story about a young cosplayer who was found with severe injuries immediately after the con. While it turned out that her injuries were actually the result of a fall, and not the assault that was considered a possibility when the news first broke, the one thing that stood out for me in all of the uproar was a phrase by a comic-con message board user, “I saw her early in the day and she looked really happy and upbeat, but I then saw her around 3 or 4 pm around the convention center and she was covering herself up and looked stressed.” Continue reading
Filed under Editorial, Geek Life, Tracy Gronewold
Editorial | Have You Seen This (X)man?
As many of my readers who regularly follow the blog know, I really love Marvel’s blue, furry X-man Beast. I’ve written poems about him, and even my local comic book store regularly puts aside issues in which he appears for me to pick up. Seriously, it doesn’t matter what the book is about, I will buy it if Beast is in it. About a year ago I decided that I wanted to find a Beast statue, so I enlisted Andrew to help me look. I had no idea what I was getting us both into.
The first place I looked for Beast was, naturally, New York Comic Con. Conventions are often a great place to get hard to find collectible items. Lots of times comic book store owners will bring comics and collectibles that have been sitting in their stores for a long time, and they are willing to strike a bargain to avoid taking them home again. So I enthusiastically started at one end of the floor and headed toward the other. I have to be honest; I didn’t scour NYCC for a Beast statue. That was my first convention and I was pretty overwhelmed with the shiny things on both sides of me. Besides, how hard could it possibly be to find a statue of one of Marvel’s more popular characters? That was probably a poor choice of rhetorical questions. Continue reading
Filed under Editorial, Tracy Gronewold

